Fuel Poverty

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 1 March 2023.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 2:15, 1 March 2023

Diolch yn fawr, Heledd Fychan. I think it is important to recognise that we are facing—. For people in fuel poverty, from 1 April, they're facing incredibly difficult and uncertain times, but these are people who are already in fuel poverty.

I do want to just address some of the issues about my meeting my Ofgem, but I do also just want to say, in terms of what we're doing, as you request, I think it is important to go back, perhaps, to earlier questions that were raised this afternoon—that in terms of improving home energy efficiency, that's crucial; that's one part of the work that we're doing through the Warm Homes programme. And, actually, up until the end of March of last year, £420 million had been invested to improve home energy efficiency, and also £38 million to support our winter fuel support scheme up until last year. Then, of course, we've had our latest winter fuel support scheme payment of £200, which has reached so many people. Actually, for your region, a total of 74,254 households in South Wales Central have received support.

I also want to say that we have the Fuel Bank Foundation partnership now delivering the fuel voucher scheme, and that's also providing crisis help to households. As far as I understand, the issue that I hope we will unite across the Chamber on, which we really need to address now, is to get the UK Government to recognise that they should not increase the energy price guarantee from £2,500 to £3,000 in April. They've got the money to do it, we know that. We know what the economy and the public finances are like. They should not do this. This would have a huge impact. And I pressed Ofgem when I met with them yesterday; I asked what are they doing about the most vulnerable households, and have they got the powers to review energy suppliers' practices, particularly in terms of the shameful way that pre-payment meters have been put into people's houses. So, I think we need to do what we can with our initiatives and our funding, even though we've had a very poor settlement from the UK Government, but we also need to all call today on the UK Government to protect households in this one way particularly, in terms of not increasing the EPG from £2,500 to £3,000 in April.